This blog is no longer utilized - however I keep it up so that I can share with others what I have done within this social media course.

This was my first time teaching this course.

To see the current social media class that I am teaching please visit.

Word Clouds


WHAT ARE WORD CLOUDS?

Created on Wordle
A word cloud is an attractive arrangement of randomly positioned words, where the most important words are bigger than the others.  Word clouds visually represent the frequency or importance of a word in a given text.   As you can see in President Obama's Inauguration speech that someone created a word cloud from.  Example:  President Obama's Inauguration Speech Created from Wordle

Word clouds can be used for educational and fun purposes.  You can place them on your blog, website, social networking site.  You can also print them automatically onto items: a great idea for making custom gifts - printing on T-shirts.   They are a fantastic tool to summarize large documents (reports, speeches, questionnaires, etc), as well as websites.

There are various websites available on the Internet to create word clouds.  Word clouds can be created from sentences, whole documents, web addresses and on some websites even from tables.

Read article on ways to utilize a word cloud:  Click Here 

More ideas for the classroom:  Click Here


WORD CLOUD WEBSITES WE WILL VISIT/EXPLORE

Wordle

Tagul

Tagexdo (will not work in  my classroom - must have Mac OS X)

TagCrowd

ToCloud

Textorizer

Text Tag Cloud

Image Chef

Worditout

ABCya Word Clouds

Image Chef - Word Clouds - Customize Items



Image Chef

Make Word Mosaic Write a comment or poem in the shape of hearts or other symbols.  Send a greeting or post to MySpace or your blog.  You can also change the background color and create your initials! 


You can also write a Short Message in Flowers and send it as an e-card or post in on your website or social  networking site! The writing may be in flash or still format.


Add your text or photo to various items.  There are various categories to explore.  Have FUN!!!!


 

Meez Trigger Actions - Chat Room

Not only can you make your Meez avatar dance in the Meez chat room, but you can also have it do other actions.  See below

Make your Meez do different actions in the chat room.

brb
dance or boogie
hello
kiss
kyle
lol
omg or milkman
ommm
*rap*
*rockout* or kamikaze
rofl
shutup
sit or squat
*spin*
*vogue* or *bluesteel*
yay
:)
:(

10 Reasons You Should Use Delicious - Social Bookmarking Site

  1. Save site found using multiple computers (home and school) to one resource.
  2. Access your bookmarks anywhere you can have web access.
  3. Continue to access your bookmarks even when your computer crashes or you get a new computer.
  4. Share web sites with your friends, teachers, family members
  5. Search your bookmarks by keywords and tags
  6. Use related tags to narrow or extend  your searches
  7. Display your saved web site links by category
  8. Learn about new sites from delicious users
  9. Subscribe to other users' delicious bookmarks
  10. Check out recently posted and popular sites

Delicious

    Diigo

    Diigo is a social bookmarking site.


    Diigo is a not just a social bookmarking tool, but a research tool as well. 

    Diigo can import all of your Delicious bookmarks (including tags) and that, in addition, Diigo can also automatically update your Delicious account whenever you bookmark a site using Diigo.  Diigo can improve your online research productivity.

    Diigo lets you do more than just bookmark web pages online. For instance, if you install the Diigo toolbar, or toolbar button, you have the ability to highlight text and pictures in a variety of colors, or add sticky notes to a bookmarked page. With this feature you can annotate web pages with thoughts, ideas or additional information. All these notes are saved for the next time you access the saved bookmark, and anyone else you share the bookmark with, (peers or teachers), will also see your annotations. It is a great way to focus attention on a large article.  Mrs. James created a group for the 3o class.  USER NAME:  FIRST AND LAST NAME - NO SPACES Click here to find your Diigo information -  which you can change on settings.  You could also very quickly create a new account with your gmail or yahoo account.  For this class you will use the account Mrs. James created for you.  We will explore Diigo's features today - we will utilize Diigo to conduct research - as a group to create Blog Guidelines and Internet Safety.   

    Diigo - What sets Diigo apart from Delicious?

    Install Diigo toolbar
    • Highlighter
    • Sticky Notes 
      • What is a sticky note?
      • Where does it go? 
      • Number represents number of comments
      • Floating sticky note - Add a floating note to this page - Comment Icon 
    • GO OVER FOUR TABS
      • My library
        • Read later
        • Bookmarks
        • Images
        • Notes
        • My Tags
        • My Lists 
      • My Network
        • Shows people you follow 
        • By following people, you can get useful items from people you trust. 
      • My Groups 
        • Share your bookmarks 
      • Community 
    • My Lists
      • Create a list
    • Import Delicious bookmarks
    • Hot Bookmarks from the Diigo Community
    • Email updates from group
    • Help feature 
    • Send to blog
    • Save to Delicious

    Mrs. James - thoughts --
    I LOVE this tool! You can create lists (with their own website to share with others), so when you highlight information, you can add it to a specific list - example Recipes.  Find a favorite recipe - just highlight it.  Just highlight information on a website and diigo copies the text as well as the site where you highlighted.  You can also save any picture with just  click. I LOVE THIS SITE!!!  Students can utilize this tool to conduct research - to share their findings - I will utilize this tool when the students have to conduct research about Being a Socially Responsible Web Tool Digital Citizen, and Internet Safety 

    Symbaloo

    Visit my Symbaloo - Social Media Web Mix

    Symbaloo's - Motto - START SIMPLE!

    A simple way for students to share and organize what they have found on the Internet is for them to use the social bookmarking website, Symbaloo. Symbaloo - is an icon bookmarking page - which is most commonly used as a personal start page. By setting it as your homepage on your browser, you can start with your online favorites everyday.

    You can create your own "web mixes" of your favorite websites - or create them by category. You can conduct a search on Symbaloo to find web mixes that you can add them to your account. When you create a Symbaloo account, there are webmixes already created, such as, major news stories and news highlights from the NYTimes, Washingtonpost, CNN and Wallstreet Journal.
    • Discover pages with the best links about a subject
    • Create your own pages with favorites
    • Share your page with the rest of the world
    • You can share it with just one person, or publish it in the Symbaloo Gallery!


    Read more »

    Social Bookmarking and Meez Chat

    Today students wrote a reflection on the Meez chat room.

    We explored social bookmarking even further - focusing on Delicious

    Downloading the Delicious - Firefox add ons.  

    Compared Symbaloo to Delicious. 

    Social Bookmarking

    Explore social bookmarking sites:
    Students checked links to make sure they all work on blog and wiki.

    • Add Delicious link to blog.
    • Add evaluation of Meez chat to blog - post room url to post as well.

    MEEZ - Chat Room


    Meez Nation

    A feature of the virtual world of Meez.com is that a user can create a room to invite other avatars to for chatting.  Features of the room include:  One can add own furniture, wallpaper, invite friends and watch videos.  Each user account can create up to 3 rooms.  After a user creates a room any one knowing of the URL can visit the room.  The room starts out plain and you can add items.  Some items are free, while others do cost coins or cash.  One can earn coins by playing games or signing up for promotions.  A user is also given free points every day by logging on and clicking The Daily Boost.

    Not only do you create a room, but you decide the "hood" that you want your room to reside in.  The students will create a room, then they will explore the chatting feature when the class meets again.

    To see the rooms that our social media classes created, please visit Our Web Tools blog.

    3b Rooms

    3o Rooms


    Today students explored the Meez chat room.  Students entered 1, 2, 3 rooms listed below.  If the student is logged into their Meez account, all they have to do is click a room's url and they will automatically be added.   While in the room - students can dance, walk around, sit and chat.  When the student types a message it pops up as a bubble and eventually disappears.


    Students also created their own rooms to chat with classmates.  Students had fun - I did as well!


    Rooms to Visit! Click on the room links below to enter - limit 11 per room.

    • Create own room and invite social media users to - see Wiki page for user names.
    • Post your Room URL on your blog.
    •  Post your Room URL on Web Tools Blog under the Meez room - edit post
      ____________________________________________________________________


      Room 1 Social Media

      Room 2 Social Media

      Room 3 Social Media Mrs. James
      ____________________________________________________________________


      Add Meez user name to class wiki so classmates can add you as a friend.

      Add Delicious user name to our class wiki

      Request friends.  You can find your classmates user names on our class wiki. Click Here

      Social Bookmarking

      Explore social bookmarking sites:
      Students checked links to make sure they all work on blog and wiki. 

      Text Amin

      http://textanim.com/


      On this website you can create animated text that you can place on your blog, wiki, email it to a friend, post it on facebook/myspace etc.

      Social Bookmarking

      Today students evaluated the MEEZ avatar on their blogs. Students were introduced to social bookmarking.  Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public Web site and tagging them with keywords.  To create a collection of social bookmarks, you register with a social bookmarking site, which lets you store bookmarks, add tags of your choice, and designate individual bookmarks as public or private.  Visitors to social bookmarking sites can search for resources by keywords, person, or popularity and see the public bookmarks, tags, and classification schemes that registered users have created and saved.   Social bookmarking is a new way of organizing information and categorizing resources.  The creator of a bookmark assigns tags to each resource.  Social bookmarking sites indicate who created each bookmark and provides access to that person's other bookmarked resources, users can easily make social connections with other individuals interested in just about any topic.  Users can also see how many people have used a tag and search for all resources that have been assigned that tag. 


      A simple way for you to share and organize what you have found on the internet is a website called Symbaloo. This is an icon social bookmarking page, which is most commonly used as a personal start page. By setting it as your homepage on your browser, you can start with your online favorites everyday. You can create your own "web mixes" of your favorite websites - or create them by category.  There is also webmixes already created for you.  This site features top news stories and news stories from the NYTimes, Washingtonpost, CNN and Wallstreet Journal. 
      • Discover pages with the best links about a subject
      • Create your own pages with favorites
      • Share your page with the rest of the world
      You can share it with just one person, or publish it in the Symbaloo Gallery!

      DELICIOUS
      Delcious is a social bookmarking website.  The primary purpose of delicious is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too.

      You must have a yahoo account to utilize Delicious  del.icio.us is a collection of favorites – yours and everyone else’s. You can use del.icio.us to:


      • Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web.
      • Share favorites/resources with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.
      • Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite — they’ve already done the work of finding it. So del.icio.us is full of bookmarks about technology, entertainment, useful information, and more. Explore and enjoy.
      You can use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved — which is made easy with tags.  These bookmarks can be public or private.  While conducting research, students can save sites with notes.  This could provide an informal bibliography.

      For more social bookmarking websites - visit our class wiki and click Social Bookmarking on the side bar.
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